You're So Vain
by Monroe-Militia
Summary: AU The power didn't go out and Bass is a male model. Miles is his agent who has a love/hate friendship with him. When Miles' niece Charlie starts coming to work with him, Bass takes a special interest in her and all of the challenges that come from her obvious immunity to his charms. Charloe
1. Chapter 1

Bass Monroe was not very happy about the idea of his manager's niece coming to work with them. Him and Miles had a good thing going and Bass didn't need some kid always walking around and messing everything up, especially if that kid was Rachel Matheson's daughter.

Today was the kid's first day, so to show Miles that he was still not on board with this idea whatsoever, when the alarm went off in the morning Bass just shut it off and rolled over before falling back asleep. Miles and his niece could wait. After all, wasn't getting your beauty sleep important for a model?

* * *

He woke up for a second time about an hour later to the sound of his phone ringing obnoxiously loudly. He made no effort to get up and after a few more rings the answering machine picked it up and Miles' voice sounded through the apartment.

"Bass, get your lazy ass out of bed. I really could not care less if you're still having your little temper tantrum about Charlie coming to work with me. If you aren't here in ten minutes, I will personally make you wish that you were never born."

He had to laugh a little at that.

"…I'm not kidding, Bass."

* * *

"…So your job is basically babysitting a grown man?" Charlie asked as Miles sighed loudly to himself while pocketing his cell phone.

"Pretty much, yeah," Miles agreed. "That's actually the most accurate description for it, actually."

A few more minutes passed and the photographer was getting more than a little aggravated over the fact that the model had yet to show up.

"Just give him five more minutes, he'll be here," Miles assured him.

"Fine. Five minutes, but one second over that and he may as well not show up at all."

Miles nodded and shot the photographer a weak smile. As soon as the other man turned to walk away, he ran a hand through his hair in exasperation as he repeated, mostly to himself, "He'll be here."

"Are you sure about that?" Charlie questioned. "I mean he's already over half an hour late. Is he always like this?"

"Not always. He usually isn't this late; he's just busy being a bit of a drama queen-"

As if that were his cue, Bass shoved the double doors of the entrance in and slowly walked through them.

He was decked out in a pair of jeans that cost more than most people's whole wardrobes did, a ridiculously overpriced black designer V- neck, his signature black leather jacket, and a pair of sunglasses which he removed and tucked into the neck of his shirt as he grinned across the room.

"I see what you mean about being a drama queen," Charlie responded with a smirk in her uncle's direction.

Bass headed straight towards where Miles was standing and blatantly looked Charlie up and down on his way over.

"So this is the niece?" He asked with a lopsided grin as he stopped in front of them. "Well I guess that she isn't a kid after all, is she Miles?" His gaze flickered over to his manager as he added on that last question.

Miles groaned loudly. Oh how he had been hoping that this wouldn't happen. This was why he had refrained from really giving Bass any information about Charlie. In fact, if he was being perfectly honest, Miles had been relieved when Bass had been so annoyed with the idea of Charlie coming to work with them.

"Just go get ready Bass," Miles said as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You're already so late that I was barely able to keep the shoot from getting cancelled."

Bass shrugged and shot one last lingering glance in Charlie's direction before he walked off.

* * *

Charlie very quickly found out that her job description basically entailed following Miles around and keeping him company while he complained about various things throughout the photo shoot. She wasn't overly far off in that assumption, since Miles mostly was just making work for her and figured that he would just give her odd jobs every once in a while so that she might not realize that he really did not need an assistant.

* * *

Later that day, after the shoot was over, Miles and Charlie were sitting in his office while he filled out paperwork and she repeatedly pointed out the fact that he should teach her how to fill out the paperwork for him instead of just having her as an assistant that does virtually nothing but stand around and watch him work.

"It's your first day on the job, kid. Don't be so eager," Miles told her. "Besides, you'd probably just mess the paperwork up."

"So then why am I even here?" Charlie questioned as she sat down on an empty corner of his desk.

"Because your mom was on your case about you being nineteen and not having a job and I'm the cool uncle," Miles responded with a slight grin.

"You're my only uncle," Charlie pointed out, swinging her legs back and forth as she spoke.

"Yeah, but why would you need another one when you've got me?" Miles questioned teasingly as he leaned back in his seat and dropped his pen back onto his desk.

Charlie was still stifling a laugh at that when Bass strolled into Miles' office with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a shirt which was definitely not the same one that he had started the day off in. This new shirt was a black button-up, although all of the buttons were undone and billowing out, with the sleeves rolled most of the way up his forearms.

As Charlie turned to look over her shoulder at him, Bass flopped down in the chair that was seated on the opposite side of the desk from Miles. His legs were splayed over Miles' just completed paperwork and closer to where Charlie was sitting than she might have preferred.

"Do you think that you could be, maybe a little less half-naked?" Miles questioned as he looked over at his friend.

"I'm a male model, it's pretty much my job to be half-naked," Bass retorted as he opened up the bottle. "Besides, I don't hear any complaints coming from Charlotte over here."

At that, Miles reached across the desk to grab the bottle away from Bass and take a long swig out of it.

"It's Charlie. And you also don't hear the oohing and ahhing from me that I'm sure you were hoping for," she responded, leaning her weight back on one arm as she rolled her eyes at him. "Or see the drooling that I'm so sure you've grown to expect."

Charlie's mom had warned her about Bass Monroe. Rachel had told her all about the conceited model who was nothing but bad news for all of those around him and so far he was just proving her right.

Miles grinned at Charlie's immunity to Bass's supposed charms, while Bass himself smirked a little in satisfaction. This could work… He liked a good challenge.

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! :) **


	2. Chapter 2

Charlie had been working with Miles and Bass for about a week and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Charlie was not planning on giving into Bass's flirtation anytime soon.

Bass and Miles were going out one night and that gave Bass an idea as he watched Miles and Charlie turn and go their separate ways towards their cars. He began to quickly walk after Charlie and just managed to catch up with her as she reached her car.

Charlie groaned a little to herself as she caught his reflection in the window of her car before she reluctantly turned around and crossed her arms over her chest.

"What do you want?"

"I was just going to offer that, since you're under drinking age, I could get you into the club that me and Miles are going to tonight," Bass offered in his best tone of sheer indifference.

"Yeah and I'm sure that you're so generously offering this at the low, low price of nothing at all, right?" Charlie challenged.

A grin spread on Bass's lips and a chuckle escaped his throat. He was used to dumb girls practically falling over and fainting at the sight of him and there was something about Charlie's refusal to fawn over him that made her oh so appealing.

"Well there might be a small price," he responded with a casual shrug as his hands remained stuffed in the pockets of his leather jacket.

"If you say that it's sleeping with you, then I will punch you… In your face," Charlie warned him. "And we both know how much you care about your appearance. Somehow a model with a black eye doesn't seem like it would go over well."

Bass's smile only grew in size. "Actually, the only stipulation is that you have to admit that you find me attractive."

"Ooh, stipulation. That's a big word for a model, I thought that you were all supposed to be dumb," she teased.

"I guess not," he agreed.

"So how exactly do you think that you're magically going to get me into a club?" Charlie questioned.

"They know me there. If you walk in with me, no one is going to question whether you're allowed in or not," Bass responded. "I'll help you get in and not hit on you for the rest of the night. But first you have to admit that you find me attractive. And, honestly, if you claim that you don't even find me a little bit attractive then, well you know what they say about ladies who protest too much."

She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head in disbelief for a second before she said, "Fine. I find you attractive. But there is absolutely no way that I'm going to become one of your brain-dead one night stands."

With that she turned and opened her car's driver door. She stepped with one foot into the car before she turned to look at him over her shoulder and asked, "What time are you picking me up?"

Bass shot her a beaming grin that was bright enough to be used as a signal flare. "Be ready at eight."

* * *

Charlie was glad that Bass actually showed up on time instead of fashionably late, since it meant that her mother and Danny were still out and she wouldn't have to explain to Rachel why Bass was picking her up or make Danny cover for her.

* * *

Bass was right; no one tried to ID Charlie as she entered the club with him.

She went to go walk away from him once they were a few steps into the bar, but he quickly reached out and grabbed her arm before she could get too far away.

"Hold on a second."

"What?" Charlie asked in a dreading tone that might have been just a little bit over-exaggerated as she turned and looked down at where his hand was lightly gripping her just above the elbow.

"I think that someone owes me a thank you," Bass teased as he released his hold on her arm.

"Thanks," she forced out before a sly grin formed on her lips, "but I'm still not sleeping with you."

He let out a small chuckle that was quickly cut off by Miles' voice as the other man approached them.

"Come on, Bass, you brought Charlie?" He complained. "She's nineteen."

"Calm down Miles, what happened to you being the cool uncle?" Charlie questioned with a wide smirk as she twisted his words against her.

"Well I guess I'm still your only uncle," he twisted her words back at her in return.

"Funny," Charlie commented sarcastically. "Besides, don't you think it's a little hypocritical to point out the fact that I'm nineteen now when you practically encourage me to drink the rest of the time?"

It wasn't so much the fact that Charlie was at a club that bothered Miles; it was more the fact that she had come with Bass.

"I _practically_ encourage you to drink?" Miles questioned with a tilted smile. "Clearly I haven't been trying hard enough at my job as corrupting influence."

Charlie laughed a little and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her uncle before she walked away in the direction of the bar.

Bass watched her go until Miles abruptly dragged his attention away.

"Come on, Bass," Miles complained. "You could at least try a little bit of subtlety for once in your life… That's my niece whose ass you're ogling at as she walks away."

"Relax, Miles. There's no harm in just looking," Bass assured his friend.

"If it's just looking does that mean that you're going to stop hitting on her?" Miles questioned. "Come on, man. She's my niece which makes her strictly off-limits. You're forbidden from sleeping with her."

"Calm down, it's just been a bit of playful flirting," Bass told his friend. "Nothing's going to happen, it's not like I'm hung up on her… Besides, I'm more interested in that pair of twins over there. Twenty bucks says that I can get them to both come home with me."

* * *

Although Charlie had drank before, that had always been when she was at Miles' apartment or when he snuck her sips of his drink at family functions, so she had no idea what to order when the bartender asked her what she would like.

Fortunately her deer-in-the-headlights reaction didn't last long before the guy standing next to her smiled at her and then leaned across to the bartender and told him something that she couldn't hear.

A few moments later, the bartender was handing her a drink which the guy who had ordered it immediately paid for.

"Thanks," she told him before trying the drink and discovering that it was shockingly good.

* * *

"Hey Miles, Nora's here," Bass commented. "I forget. You two are off again, right?"

Miles rolled his eyes, "Yeah."

"Which means that you're going to go over there and talk to her, aren't you?" Bass questioned. "And get back together with her for about five minutes total before you two break up again."

"Shut up," Miles muttered under his breath before standing up and leaving his friend alone with the set of twins.

* * *

About an hour later, Bass was just getting up to leave with the pair when one of the twins questioned, "What's wrong with that girl?"

The girl's sister laughed a little before responding with, "I don't know."

Bass was curious, so he looked over only to find that Charlie was dancing on top of the bar, laughing and kicking glasses off of the counter. Bass watched as a guy that he had seen buying her drinks earlier turned and said something to his friends before they all started laughing and headed towards the exit, effectively abandoning Charlie.

Bass sighed internally as he looked around in the hope of spotting Miles.

"Hey, have either of you seen my friend?" Bass questioned.

"What, you mean your manager?" One of them asked. "He left with that girl he was talking to about half an hour ago, why?"

"Come on. I thought we were going," the other complained.

Bass raked a hand through his hair before making a decision that he knew he would probably end up regretting in the very near future.

"You two should find someone else to go home with," he told the pair.

"What?"

"You're kidding me, right?"

Bass muttered a weak apology under his breath before he quickly turned and headed over to where a still dancing Charlie was getting yelled at by the bartender. Bass silently assured himself that the only reason that he was passing up the chance at sleeping with twins was because Charlie was Miles' niece, not because he had feelings for her or was going soft.

As he reached Charlie, she spotted him and turned quickly enough that she almost slid off the counter and began to laugh. Bass quickly reached to grab her waist, keeping her from toppling off the bar-top as the bartender continued shouting at Charlie.

"What the hell do you think that you're doing?" The bartender demanded angrily.

"Calm down, we're leaving," Bass said before turning his attention back to the drunk girl. "Come on, Charlie."

Bass helped Charlie down as the bartender demanded, "What about all of the damage?"

The model reached into his back pocket and pulled out a couple of bills which he tossed at the bartender before turning away again.

"Okay, let's go drunk girl," he said as he turned back to Charlie and helped her while she half-danced, half-stumbled out of the club.

They barely made it out of the door before Charlie tripped over a crack in the cement and stumbled to the ground. As she sat up, she began clutching at her ankle in pain.

Bass knelt down and picked her up, placing one arm under her knees and the other under her back to help support her.

"You are such a light-weight, Charlie," Bass commented under his breath as he carried her over to his car.

Once they reached the car, he set her down and leaned her against the side while he opened the door and then helped her into the passenger seat. After he had gotten her into the car, he knelt down outside of it and gently inspected her ankle.

"It should be fine," he told her. "It might be a bit bruised tomorrow, but nothing too serious."

When he stood back up, he noticed that Charlie was struggling to put her seatbelt on, so he reached past her to fasten it up.

"How much did you drink?" He questioned her in a mildly amused tone.

"I don't know what was in them, but not that much," she slurred out in response.

"Alright. Miles went home with Nora, so his place is a no go," Bass told her. "And if I take you home like this, then your mom would kill us both, so you can sleep at my place tonight."

"Thanks," Charlie told him as her eyelids began to droop.

* * *

By the time that they reached Bass's apartment building, Charlie was already half-asleep in the passenger seat, so Bass carried her over his shoulder up to his apartment.

As he carried her up the stairs, Charlie noticed the view from over his shoulder and thought to herself that they should call him Ass Monroe. That thought resulted in an immediate giggle fit.

"What are you laughing at?" Bass questioned, but Charlie provided no answer.

A minute or two later, they were in Bass's apartment and Charlie began to laugh a little once again as she slurred out, "I was expecting a mansion covered in pictures of you."

Bass laughed a little under his breath as he carried her to the bedroom. Once there, he pulled the covers back before setting her down.

Within seconds, Charlie had the covers up to her face and had fallen asleep.

Bass smiled a little to himself before he left the room to go sleep on his couch.

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! I hope that you liked the chapter and thanks for reading! :) Also, a special thanks to LemonSupreme, priya1008, IceonFire7, JM2788, cari, and the anonymous guest reviewer! **


	3. Chapter 3

Bass woke up early the next morning. He looked around, a little disoriented by the fact that he was in the living room and not the bedroom, before standing up. He'd been tired last night, too tired to bother even finding a blanket. He'd just flopped down onto the couch and dozed off right away so there was nothing to put away.

He didn't have a hangover. That was one pleasant perk that came from having to take care of drunk Charlie... Bass never drank when he was driving, at least not since the accident that had taken his family, so he had ended up remaining perfectly sober the night before. He had been planning on drinking once he got the twins home, but his plans had changed.

Bass checked the time and was once again pleasantly surprised when he discovered that he was up early.

He knew that there was no point in trying to go back to sleep, so he decided that he'd just get ready then and surprise Miles by showing up to work early for once.

* * *

Miles knew that the chances of Bass being up on time for work after taking the twins home were low, so he decided to head over to Bass's place to try and get his ass in gear. That seemed to be more effective than a phone call on most days.

Miles let himself into Bass's apartment, using the key that Bass had given him a long time ago, and instantly headed for his friend's bedroom.

Bass was still in bed, or so Miles thought, with the blankets pulled up to block Miles' view of him.

Miles turned the lights on and shouted loudly, "Come on, wake up Bass! ...Move your ass! You've got to get ready!"

After that two things happened at once. The body in the bed rolled over to reveal that it was Charlie at the same time as the door opened to the adjoining bathroom and Bass walked out with just a towel wrapped around his waist.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Miles groaned out in an annoyed tone. "Seriously? When I left last night _you _were going to leave her alone-" He stared pointedly at Bass for a moment before turning his attention to his niece who was still cocooned in Bass's bed with one arm now draped over her eyes to try and block out the light. "And _you_ weren't going to sleep with him."

Charlie seemed to wake up at that as her whole body seemed to go on high alert.

"No... _No._" She said insistently as she stared over at Bass in horror. "We did _not _sleep together... _Please _tell me that we didn't sleep together."

She looked down and braced herself before she lifted up the blankets a little and let out a quiet sigh of relief. She was fully clothed... That was a good sign.

"You're right, we didn't," Bass agreed as he stepped further into the room. "But thanks for making it sound like that would be the absolute end of the world... That was nice."

Charlie was too busy falling back onto the pillow out of relief to look even remotely apologetic.

"So then what happened to the twins?" Miles questioned as he turned his attention back towards his best friend.

"I say you still owe me twenty bucks," Bass told him. "I won that bet. I mean they were about to go home with me when I had to leave them to save Charlie's drunk ass. And when I say drunk, I mean _drunk_. She was dancing on the bar-top and kicking drinks off and smashing them drunk."

"I don't remember that at all," Charlie mumbled into a pillow that she had moved over her face to try and block out the light and make the sounds less harsh. It did muffle them some, but it definitely was not enough to ease her killer headache.

"That's probably because you just drank anything that was given to you without even asking what was in it," Bass retorted in a less than sympathetic tone before turning his attention back towards his manager. "That guy must have been buying her something strong and then the little bastard just ran off laughing when she started breaking things... So I brought her here so that Rachel wouldn't murder me."

"She's still going to murder _me_," Charlie pointed out, her voice still muffled by her pillow shield.

"No, she's not," Miles told his niece. "I'll call her and tell her that you fell asleep on my couch last night."

"Thanks," Charlie muttered before her tone suddenly became more urgent as she threw the pillow off of herself and brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh no."

She quickly ran past Bass and moments later he and Miles could hear her emptying the contents of her stomach.

"Okay there is no way that she's in good enough condition to go to work," Bass pointed out. "Look, she can stay here today and get over her hangover while we're at work. But _you_ have to drive her home after."

"Alright... I've got to call Rachel first and then I'll tell her," Miles responded. "_You_ go put some fucking clothes on."

"I'm a model, Miles," Bass said with a grin as he turned to walk away. "It's my job to walk around half-naked, remember?"

"That just keeps getting funnier, Bass," Miles called after him sarcastically.

His friend just turned back around and shot him one last smirk. Miles rolled his eyes at the model and then pulled out his cell phone.

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! A huge thanks goes out to LemonSupreme, sammxhill, perfectmanhattan, BassCharlie, JM2788, neverthereb4, IceonFire7, and the two guest reviewers :) **


	4. Chapter 4

Charlie woke up for a second time a few hours later and had to take a second to remember where she was. Her head was still bothering her a little, but it was certainly nowhere near as bad as it had been earlier.

As she got out of Bass's bed, she discovered that the bottoms of her pant legs were stained from a combination of mud from her fall and alcohol from when she had been kicking glasses off the table.

Great, that'd be fun to try and explain to her mother when she got home… She just hoped that she'd be able to get away with the truth that she had fallen down outside and be able to exclude the part where she had been drunk at the time. She'd just have to hope that her mom wouldn't smell the lingering alcohol on her.

She felt like a mess and she knew that if she were at home that she would just go for a shower, but she wasn't sure what exactly the point was to just put on the same dirty and stained clothes from the night before. With that in mind, she managed to convince herself that Bass's apartment was very thoroughly clean, so he would probably prefer if she changed out of her muddy clothes and borrowed something of his.

* * *

After Charlie went for a shower she was feeling quite a bit better as she stood, wrapped up in a towel, staring into Bass's closet.

It was intimidating. Everything looked expensive and she was sure that everything was. She didn't want to put on clothes worth more money than she had when she still wasn't a hundred percent sure whether she was going to throw up again or not.

Finally she turned away from the closet and decided to check his dresser to see if she could find anything that was a little less imposing looking.

Charlie hesitated in front of the dresser for a moment when she saw an old picture of a much younger Bass with two younger girls who appeared to be his sisters. She hadn't known that he had any siblings.

She had to smirk a little as she saw that the picture next to that one was a picture that was a few years old of him and Miles. Although Bass seemed to like to act as if Miles was just his manager in front of others and that drove Miles insane, it was clear that they were good friends.

When she opened the dresser, she was relieved to find that it was where he kept his old ratty clothes that looked like they had been washed far too many times for their own good. She pulled out a pair of sweat pants and a baggy hoody and was relieved when she was able to tie the pants tight enough to keep them from slipping off.

As she got dressed, Charlie noticed a bruise that had formed on the front of her ankle. As she stared down at it, she could feel the hint of a memory tugging at her brain and struggled to try and reach it.

She vaguely remembered falling and thought that she might remember being carried. But then she remembered Bass's gentle touch and the kindness in his eyes as he told her, _"It should be fine. It might be a bit bruised tomorrow, but nothing too serious._"

The memory seemed strange to her. It didn't seem to fit with the entire attitude that he'd had earlier that day. That morning he had seemed annoyed and angry and judgemental about having to deal with her instead of the twins that he had been planning on taking home, but in that memory he had seemed patient and caring. It was like seeing two exact opposite sides of him.

Once dressed, Charlie internally debated with herself for a few minutes whether or not to snoop around. She was naturally curious and the fact that he'd been trying to pretend that he'd never been nice to her, or at least hadn't wanted to, was making her more than a little inquisitive towards him. But still, she didn't want to be nosy… Maybe if she just took a little look.

* * *

Half an hour later, Charlie finished rummaging through Bass's things with not much to show for it. She had discovered a few more old pictures and found out that he'd used to be in the army, but that was about it. That did make her feel a little better though, since she had felt a little guilty about it as she snooped.

It was still only lunch time and there was a long day ahead of her before Miles would be back to take her home.

She headed into the kitchen and grabbed herself a bagel, the most that she thought that she would be able to stand eating in her current state, and headed to the living room to eat in front of the TV.

* * *

When Bass came home that evening, he was amused to find that Charlie was curled up on his couch, fast asleep, with the TV on.

As he gently shook her shoulder he commented, "Good thing I didn't tell you to make yourself at home, who knows what you would have done then."

As Charlie looked down at herself and remembered that she was dressed in his clothes she shot him a sheepish smile, "Sorry. I guess I should go change back into my own clothes."

"Don't worry about it," he told her. "Keep them. But you should get moving; Miles wanted me to tell you to get your ass down there now."

"Thanks," she said as she stood up from the couch.

"It's really not that big of a deal, those are practically worn out anyways," he mumbled.

"I didn't just mean for the clothes," she told him. "I know that there are a lot of ways that you would have rather spent last night than dealing with me when I'm drunk. So thanks."

He nodded, seeming uncharacteristically uncomfortable before he told her, "You should probably go. Miles didn't sound like he was in an overly patient mood.**"**

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! A huge thanks goes out to sammxhill, JM2788, IceonFire7, LemonSupreme, neverthereb4, and Dark-Supernatural-Angel for reviewing last chapter :)**


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